JULIA MELTZER

Julia Meltzer her work takes up subjects ranging from the bureaucracy of secrecy to contemporary politics in the Middle East. She frequently collaborates with Los Angeles based artist David Thorne to produce installations, photographs, and videos that raise questions about the uses of documents and their social, political, and affective impact.
Formerly working under the moniker The Speculative Archive, the artists’ collaborative activities from 1999 to 2003 examined the intersection of state secrecy, memory, and history. Newer works address the use of documents— ranging from images and texts to objects, people, and even physical structures—“to project and claim visions of the future,” according to the artists.
Meltzer taught at HampshireCollege and UC Irvine. She received her BA from BrownUniversity and her MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a recipient of grants from Art Matters, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship Fund. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Damascus, Syria in 2005–6 and is a Guggenheim Fellow in 2009-10. She since 2003 is founder and director of Clockshop, a Los Angeles based non-profit arts and culture organization.